The material I use for my creations is mostly scrap metal of various kinds. And over the years I have collected a lot of it! My favorite scrap is that which has been lying outdoors in the forest and land for many decades and has partly ended up underground or been covered by vegetation, which has resulted in it being heavily corroded. The surface of such material can look almost organic with a dimpled structure like a lunar landscape as if it is trying to unite with nature!

In the area around Eksjö there are several good places that I visit from time to time, with the permission of the landowners, to look for scrap. These include abandoned farms, the ruins of watermills and hydroelectric power plants where much of the iron I find is over a hundred years old and, despite the ravages of time, bears clear traces of having been hand-forged by someone once upon a time.

Working with such material is a very strange experience! Sometimes I have an eerie feeling that the blacksmith who first worked with the material is somehow present and that I am now taking on his work and giving the iron a new life and purpose. Furthermore, such antique material can be very different from modern metal and it can behave very unpredictably so i have to be very cautious when working with it as it can vary in hardness and quality and can break in strange ways if not handled correctly. I also get a lot of material that people donate to me after finding it when they clean out garages, barns etc.

The space in my workshop is mostly taken up by all the material I have collected over the years and I have sorted it out as carefully as possible so that I can easily find what I need when i need it. one could say that my workshop is a well-organized scrap pile! The pictures below are from some of the sites i salvage my material from. And the storage in my workshop.